OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the incidence and characteristics of musculoskeletal manifestations in polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) and temporal arteritis (TA). METHODS: The records of 163 cases of PMR or TA diagnosed over a 15 year period in one area of Spain were reviewed for the presence and type of musculoskeletal manifestations. RESULTS: ...

The surgical findings in 147 consecutive hands that underwent primary carpal tunnel release between 1983 and 1993 were reviewed for anatomic variation. A classification is introduced for the two major types of variations found. The variations found within the carpal tunnel, termed intrinsic or Type I, were space-occupying lesions of ...

OBJECTIVE: A pediatric rheumatology committee of ILAR has proposed new classification criteria for chronic childhood arthritis. The umbrella term "juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA)" was chosen and the disease was subdivided into 7 categories. Evaluation for these criteria is under way. METHODS: We analyzed data of 200 consecutive children with rheumatic ...

We present an office-based technique for performing arthroscopic synovectomy of the wrist in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Intra-articular anesthesia as well as subcutaneous portal anesthesia are used. Standard portals are used in the radial carpal and midcarpal joints. Standard instrumentation is used and the synovectomy is accomplished using a motorized ...

The clinical features of adult onset Still's disease (AOSD) have rarely been described in Thai patients. We report the clinical manifestations, laboratory findings, and outcome of 16 Thai patients with AOSD, and compare these findings with those of the western and other oriental series. Fourteen patients (87.5%) had the onset ...

Ten patients with active, destructive rheumatoid arthritis refractory to antirheumatic therapy enrolled in a study to evaluate the effects of intensive immunosuppression followed by autologous stem cell transplantation. Intensive immunosuppression was achieved with high dose cyclophosphamide as part of the mobilization (4 g/m2) and conditioning (200 mg/kg) regimen. The autologous ...

The authors describe a patient with psoriatic arthritis in whom an increased level of F-18 fluorodeoxyglucose (F-18 FDG) uptake was seen in the joints of the hands. The areas of increased activity correlated well with the regions of symptoms reported by the patient. This case illustrates the potential use of ...

We describe a case of septic arthritis and bacteremia caused by Burkholderia pseudomallei, a bacterium that is endemic in East Asia and northern Australia. We believe that dissemination occurred in our patient after surgical excision of a pulmonary nodule. Bacteremic melioidosis can present with musculoskeletal involvement in 2-10% of patients, ...

Rifampicin is an antibiotic that has been currently used for the treatment of noninfectious articular lesions with satisfactory results. The first experience was performed with patients who presented rheumatoid arthritis, and later with haemophilic patients. The clinical experience of three haemophilia centres which used rifampicin for the treatment of chronic ...

OBJECTIVE: To examine the time of occurrence of first radiographic erosions in a cohort of patients with inflammatory polyarthritis. METHODS: Patients were recruited through the Norfolk Arthritis Register, which follows up patients annually. Patients with features of rheumatoid arthritis (other than erosions) sufficient, together with erosions, to meet the American ...

OBJECTIVE: To examine consecutive patients with Whipple's disease (WD) for the full clinical spectrum of spondyloarthritis. METHODS: Nine consecutive patients, 8 men, 1 woman, with WD were clinically evaluated and examined for clinical and radiological manifestations of spondyloarthritis by 2 rheumatologists with special interest in spondyloarthritis. The mean age of ...

Rheumatoid arthritis often involves the axial skeleton. Rheumatoid nodule, often a manifestation of rheumatoid arthritis may be present in 20-30% of patients of rheumatoid arthritis. A 69-year-old male was presented with weakness of all the four limbs. He had history of rheumatoid arthritis for last 10 years. On examination, a ...

We compared power Doppler sonography to laboratory indices of disease activity in patients with knee arthritis to determine the clinical relevance of hypervascularity. Eight healthy volunteers and 22 patients with symptoms and signs of knee arthritis were studied. Presence or absence of hypervascularity, synovial thickening, effusion, and Baker's cysts were ...

This paper reviews published studies on the intramuscular use of meloxicam in acute rheumatic conditions. Data were obtained from 68 healthy volunteers and >800 patients with conditions such as arthritis, sciatica and lumbago who were treated with intramuscular injections of meloxicam compared with oral formulations. Intramuscular meloxicam appears to have ...

OBJECTIVE: To draw attention to arthritis that developed in patients who underwent total proctocolectomy with ileal pouch construction for ulcerative colitis (UC). METHODS: The course of 4 patients who developed arthritis for the first time after ileal-anal pouch anastomosis is described. In addition, the relationship to the chronic inflammation of ...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the clinical features and outcome of patients with Behçet's syndrome (BS) and amyloidosis and to assess the associated risk factors. METHOD: A chart review was done to determine the frequency of amyloidosis in BS among 4000 patients. Data from 14 BS patients with amyloidosis were compared with ...

We report the clinical and neuroradiological features of cerebral rheumatoid pachymeningitis with 1 year follow-up in two patients. MRI of the head enabled noninvasive diagnosis of both the meningeal abnormality and its complications, consisting of hypertensive hydrocephalus and superior sagittal sinus thrombosis, respectively. Dural sinus thrombosis, very uncommon in rheumatoid ...

Spondyloarthropathies (SpA) are a group of related disorders. The hallmark symptoms include spondylitis, pauci-articular synovitis and enthesiopathy. In an important number of cases, subclinical gut inflammation with pathological findings resembling Crohn's disease can be found. Some of these patients may eventually develop overt Crohn's disease. Conventional medical therapy in patients ...

The aim of the study was to create subgroups among psoriatic arthritis patients on the basis of dermatological features, clinical pattern of arthritis, and laboratory, immunological and radiological findings. Data on 100 patients were expressed in a standardised form and entered into hierarchical cluster analysis according to Ward's method. Seven ...

OBJECTIVE: Arthritis has been an associated finding in juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM), but its prevalence, course, and response to therapy has not been well described. We investigated the frequency, course, and clinical and radiographic features in a large cohort of patients with JDM. METHODS: The charts of 94 patients with idiopathic ...

The role of increased plasma prolactin (PRL) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is not fully explained. The aim of this study was to compare the clinical features and the treatment administered in RA patients with normal and elevated plasma PRL concentrations. Forty-nine patients with rheumatoid arthritis and 16 healthy subjects were ...

Our goal in the present work was to determine whether male patients with untreated hypogonadism have an increased risk of developing rheumatic/autoimmune disease (RAD), and, if so, whether there is a relation to the type of hypogonadism. We carried out neuroendocrine, genetic, and rheumatologic investigations in 13 such patients and ...

The aim of this study was to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to evaluate the pathological changes taking place in the hands of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and to attempt to characterize early and persistent changes. 42 patients were examined, including 31 women and 11 men in age from ...

Weekly low dose methotrexate is an established treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, but its use in elderly people has not been adequately examined. The aim of this study was to evaluate its safety in elderly patients with rheumatoid arthritis. A retrospective review of the clinical records of rheumatoid arthritis patients over ...

To determine the natural history of cervical lesions in rheumatoid arthritis, 161 patients who had been followed for a minimum of 5 years were enrolled in this study. The average follow-up period was 10.2 years (range, 5 to 20 years). The severity of the rheumatoid arthritis was classified into three ...

OBJECTIVE: To survey the effectiveness of etanercept in the treatment of severe, resistant psoriatic arthritis. METHODS: Ten patients coming from the clinical practice of 5 different rheumatologists and already using etanercept (25 mg subcutaneously twice weekly) were formally assessed at 3 and 12 months after etanercept use. RESULTS: All patients ...

Clinical trials of DAB(389)IL-2 (denileukin diftitox, ONTAK) have been conducted in a variety of disease states as well as in normal volunteers. The individuals treated include 45 volunteers in pharmacokinetic testing, 195 patients with noncancer indications, and 216 patients with lymphoma, including ongoing trials. The noncancer trials involved patients with ...

OBJECTIVE: We describe an outbreak of parvovirus (PV) arthropathy that was detected in a rheumatology clinic in San Antonio, Texas, during the winter of 1994. Parvovirus B19 causes acute symmetric polyarthritis (ASPA) in adults. In the US, the majority of cases described are from the northern US. METHODS: An outbreak ...

Twenty endoscopic carpal tunnel releases were performed in 15 patients with quiescent seropositive rheumatoid arthritis using the Agee technique. Patients were not considered for endoscopic carpal tunnel release if there was florid synovitis with crepitus or loss of active finger flexion, if there was evidence of flexor tendon rupture or ...

OBJECTIVES: 1) To analyze the clinical features and outcome of patients with rheumatoid arthritis and pyarthrosis seen in a rheumatology department during a 9-year period; 2) To review the available literature about this association in the last decade. METHODS: From the database of our department, we collected all hospitalized cases ...

OBJECTIVE: Evaluation of the course and the prognosis of juvenile chronic arthritis (JCA) and juvenile spondyloarthropathy (JSpA). METHODS: The entire medical histories of 171 patients with JCA or JSpA were reviewed. The study cohort comprised 102 patients with oligoarticular, 17 with systemic, and 24 with polyarticular onset of JCA; 28 ...

OBJECTIVE: To examine the spectrum and the main clinical data of patients presenting with polymyalgia symptoms who have conditions other than polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) or PMR associated with giant cell arteritis (GCA) during a 10 year period in Northwestern Spain. METHODS: Clinical records of patients presenting with polymyalgia symptoms diagnosed ...

We assessed the etiology and the prevalence of peripheral arterial and venous disease in leg ulcers in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and systemic sclerosis and analyzed the outcome after treatment of macrovascular disease. A clinical study on 15 consecutive patients with chronic leg ulcers in collagen vascular disease (nine patients ...

Overexpression of cytokines in inflamed joints plays an important role in joint inflammation and in damage to articular tissue. Biological agents aimed at specifically antagonising tumour necrosis factor (TNF) are effective in the treatment of adult rheumatoid arthritis. A recent trial of etanercept, a genetically engineered fusion protein consisting of ...

Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis is a disease characterized by chronic inflammation in one or more joints; it affects children and adolescents up to 18 years of age. This disease may cause significant skeletal joint destruction, and the temporomandibular joint, like other joints, may become severely affected resulting in aberrant mandibular growth, ...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of a loading dose regimen of three intravenous infusions with infliximab in patients with active spondyloarthropathy. METHODS: A monocentre, open-label pilot study of 21 patients with different subtypes of spondyloarthropathy was conducted. Treatment resistant patients with active disease (fulfilling inclusion criteria) received three ...

Through percutaneous provocation with metallic mercury and phenyl mercuric acetate in patients stating the presence of subjective psychosomatic symptoms following dental amalgam treatment, it has been possible to categorize and score two extreme groups of patients, mercury-intolerant and mercury-tolerant patients reacting and not reacting, respectively, to low doses of mercury. ...

BACKGROUND: Acute rheumatic fever is considered a relatively uncommon disease in developed countries. Although cases are encountered in the Nazareth area in Israel, no systematic study of this disease has been done in the last 20 years. OBJECTIVE: To study the incidence and characteristics of acute rheumatic fever cases in ...

The radiological interpretation of bone and joint disease has emerged as a subspecialty in its own right. This chapter offers simple guidelines for the approach to a plain film examination that has been taken in a patient with a non-inflammatory arthritis. It does not discuss what films should be taken ...

OBJECTIVE: This study was undertaken to analyse the diffusion characteristics of synovial fluid in degenerative and inflammatory arthropathies. DESIGN AND PATIENTS: Ten in vitro specimens of synovial fluid from patients with both degenerative and inflammatory arthropathy were studied at body temperature with a navigator-corrected spin echo diffusion sequence (B values ...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the applicability of the ILAR criteria for classification of childhood arthritis in an outpatient pediatric rheumatology clinic population, and to determine the proportion of children who met standard classification criteria, but failed to meet ILAR criteria for specific arthritides, and therefore became unclassifiable. METHODS: We reviewed the ...

OBJECTIVE AND STUDY DESIGN: The purpose of this study was to investigate the presence of a correlation between methotrexate pharmacokinetics and clinical efficacy in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. PATIENTS AND METHODS: The study was carried out in 29 patients with rheumatoid arthritis. The patients received intramuscular methotrexate (MTX) 7.5mg once ...

Patients with Group A beta-hemolytic streptococcal infection and articular disease, who do not fulfill the modified Jones criteria for diagnosis of acute rheumatic fever (ARF), have been classified as having poststreptococcal reactive arthritis (PSRA). We reviewed the clinical characteristics, laboratory findings and outcome of 15 patients with PSRA. None of ...

Autoimmune rheumatologic disease has a wide range of clinical expression that occasionally can be disabling. Patients with visceral organ involvement are exposed to significant morbidity and mortality if effective therapy is not forthcoming. The mainstay of therapy has been immunosuppression. However, some patients fail to respond to conventional doses of ...